random thoughts from a wanderer

Weekly Ponderings

Here are some things I read over the last couple of weeks that made me think. Inclusion does not equal a full endorsement of everything in each post. To read each post in its entirety click on the title beneath each excerpt.

“But if I’m honest, Donald Trump’s behavior is the public repudiation and total exposure of my own sin. Every time he tweets impulsively, every time he lies, every time he revels in his own grandiosity, he is doing things that I have done and continue to do. So if I respond to Donald Trump’s demise like a Christian, it would be with my own repentance.”

“Relief and development work, or “charity” more generally, was condoned only if it was explicitly subservient to the proclamation of the gospel — a means to that end and not something regarded or conducted as an end in itself…

It seems to me that this Great Commission objection has waned in the 21st century. I would count that as a positive development, except that I fear it has simply been replaced by something else that’s even worse… Today they seem to demonstrate that same instinct, but it’s no longer proclamation evangelism that they worry may be undermined — it’s opposition to legal abortion.

It means that white evangelicals may be permitted, conditionally, to consider some other, tangential causes — “creation care,” or “racial reconciliation,” or “human trafficking,” or whatever you like — but only to the extent that these things do not distract from the absolute, paramount duty white evangelicals have to support the election of Republicans to every branch and every level of government in the hopes that they will eventually pack the Supreme Court with enough anti-abortion justices to overturn Roe v. Wade.

That’s a starkly blunt way of putting it, but that is the essence of the objection. All those other causes, you see, may be laudable and commendable in and of themselves, but they’re all also vaguely liberal-seeming. And it’s dangerous to permit ourselves to have too much sympathy for liberal-ish causes because that might undermine our resolve to vote for the kind of anti-liberals we need to support in order to fulfill our paramount obligation of criminalizing abortion…

It seems like the instinctual white evangelical response of “Maybe, but it mustn’t be allowed to distract us from our pre-eminent duty to proclaim the gospel” has largely been replaced with “Maybe, but it mustn’t be allowed to distract us from our pre-eminent duty to be ‘pro-life.’”

“When I asked her why she became an atheist, she said, “I started reading the Bible.”

We Christians often tell people that if they would only read the Bible, they would come to see that God is real and that He loves them. We hear testimony after testimony about how drug addicts and hookers were considering suicide but somehow got a Bible and started reading it and ended up giving their life to Christ.

I am not in any way denying such accounts or stories.

But I think it is also time to admit that while many people decided to follow Jesus as a result of reading the Bible, there are many others who turned away from God after reading the Bible.

Part of this, I am convinced, is because we Christians have said that the entire Bible is the Word of God, but then we ignore, gloss over, conveniently forget, or are simply dishonest about some of the more troubling portions of Scripture.”

“…We’re obviously still battling against several issues today, but seeing the things my mother and grandmother were forced to endure has really opened my eyes. I mean, I always knew things were different back in the day, but I can’t believe how long it took for a wife to not be legally classified as “subordinate” to her husband — much less, how difficult it was for a single gal to get her own bank account and credit card.”

“I taught American history for a while and it often felt as if we were looking at a constant flow of outrageous bigotry by the hands of white American Christians. They held themselves as superior in their entitled sense of manifest destiny, the deep belief that white Christians were sent by God to convert and civilize the “savage” world of the “other.” From the mass genocide of Native Americans, to slavery, to constant restrictions of various groups of immigrants, to turning our backs on the Jewish people fleeing genocide, to turning our backs on the Syrian people fleeing genocide – this Christian nation holds the clear belief that race, nationality, religion, and far more determine how people deserve to be treated – their worthiness of our love. It shouldn’t be surprising that our level of empathy and concern tends to decrease drastically as skin tone darkens..”

“I have never cared for Kathy Griffin’s comedy. I never thought she was funny. I never thought she was a very good actress. And I wasn’t surprised when she posted photos depicting a simulated beheading of the current president. Frankly it seems in line with her brand of humor. I was shocked to hear all the outrage coming from people who have spent the past eight years bemoaning the idea of political correctness. These people have complained about how no one can take a joke anymore. Well Kathy Griffin is a comedian. She made a joke. It wasn’t funny. It was politically incorrect and offensive, but that’s exactly what a lot of people claim to want…

It is particularly ironic that our current president took time to let us know his feelings were hurt and that his youngest child was upset. Does he imagine that his years-long invective against Obama wasn’t harmful to Sasha and Malia? Do only his children matter?

The same people who are condemning Griffin recently cheered on and elected to Congress a Montana man who physically assaulted a reporter at a campaign rally. These are the same people who do not speak up and condemn the actions and speech of the murderer on the train in Portland. They don’t speak up when someone leaves a noose in the African American exhibit at the Smithsonian. They don’t speak up when someone spray paints racist graffiti on LeBron James’s house or vandalizes yet another Jewish cemetery. And they damn sure didn’t speak up when protestors were burning Obama in effigy after the 2008 election.”